Canton woman sacrificed all at the front in World War I

Helen Homans died in France after serving as a volunteer nurse in World War I.

Helen Homans, who lived in Milton and Canton, spent much of World War I working as a volunteer nurse in France, sometimes close to the front.

A fellow nurse from Boston, Edith Parkman, said of Homans “Everybody who saw her at work, doctors, nurses.... appreciated that she literally killed herself for her wounded.”

In 1918, Homans contracted the flu, what eventually became a worldwide pandemic that killed millions.

“Those last days before she fell ill, the work was perfectly tremendous: Many of the nurses were ill, and yet the hospital was fuller than it had been since the beginning,” Parkman wrote in a letter to Homans’ mother. “We three had almost 200 to look after, which meant not a moment of rest from 7 in the morning until night.”

Homans was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm on her deathbed. She died on Nov. 5. 1918, just six days before the end of the war.

“No soldier ever laid down his life more than Helen did for France,” Parkman wrote.

She is buried in the family plot at Milton Cemetery. There is a plaque in her honor at historic King’s Chapel in Boston, and her name appears with those of 13 Canton Men who died during the war on the town’s World War I memorial.